Lecture 6 - Stability, change and ageing

Question 1

What is trait expression influenced by?

Answer 1

• social demands (how society would like you to behave - depends on situation)
• expectations (of friends and family)
• social values/ cultural values - e.g. individualist vs collectivist
• biology/ heritability
• individual circumstances
- these factors change with age

Question 2

What 3 areas did Roberts & Mroczek (2008) argue people change in as they get older

Answer 2

• warmth
• self-growth
• emotional stability

Question 3

Give an example of culture change in how people are viewed

Answer 3

• concept of a young person changes often, even in 10 years

- and concept of what is classed as a middle aged person - as we are living longer

Question 4

Define a cohort effect

Answer 4

Differences between groups of (similary aged) individuals who share a common experience - people who were born in 1980 for instance

Question 5

What is a cross-sectional study?

Answer 5

all ages at a certain point in time

Question 6

When measuring cognition, what does research seem to focus on?

Answer 6

Visual/ spatial or verbal measures seperately
- e.g.:
• ravens
• wechslers
• kaufmans Brief intelligence test - assessed as a child, then later as an adult
• Cattells culture fair test - doesnt tap into verbal/ visual/ spatial abilities

Question 7

What are the different forms of Ravens progressive matrices?

Answer 7

1. Coloured progressive matrices (4-11 years)
   - simple patterns, very short test
2. Standard Progressive matrices (11-18)
   - patterns are more complicated, takes longer
3. Advanced Progressive matrices (18+)
   - takes longer, start easy but more onto harder ones

• it’s about visual/ spatial abilities in the mind

Question 8

Outline the Wechsler Abbreviated scale of intelligence (WASI)

Answer 8

• shorter version of his original tests
• tests 6-90 year olds!
• tasks are standardised for your age

has 4 subsets of tasks: (30 minutes each)

1. Similarities - picture/ word shared characteristics
   - do pictures relate to words?
2. Vocabulary - word and picture description
   - describe a photo
3. matrix reasoning - pattern completion on paper
   - given 9 squares pieces of paper and have to rearrange them into a sequence
4. Block design - pattern completion with blocks

Shorter version only tests 2 and 3

Question 9

Give some examples of verbal/ vocabulary tasks

Answer 9

• given a word and have to choose the word that best describes from a list
• what does this word mean?
• given category and have to list as many items that are in that category

Question 10

What do the results of WAIS show?

Answer 10

• what typical intelligence of each age group is
• patterns of what happens to intelligence as we age
• snap shot at that point in time, using a wide variety of different people that have same ages (cross-sectional)

Question 11

What are limitations on cross-sectional studies?

Answer 11

X - one cohort may be bias than the others

- e.g. everyone in one academic year may have done this

Question 12

What is a limitation of longitduinal studies?

Answer 12

X - cant compare the progression of one task to the progression of another task - peformance on a verbal task may get worse but it doesnt mean spatial performance will too

Question 13

What are the 2 types of tasks on the WAIS?

Answer 13

Hold - can show deteroation

• verbal scale
• e.g. alzheimers, dementia - can test them at the start, during the middle or at the end to plot deterioration
• information; comprehension; arithmetic; similarities’ Digit-span; vocabulary

Don’t hold

• performance scale
• visual/ spatial tasks
• dont show deteriation - as they dont show how we use knowledge
• tend to be inbuilt abilities, not learned ones
• Dight symbol; picture completion; block design’ picture arrangement’ object assembly

Question 14

Outline the difference of cattell’s fluid and crystallised intelligence

Answer 14

Fluid intelligence

• innate intellectual power - not learnt
• think logically and solve problems

Crystallised intelligence

• uses experience
• uses education
• wisdom

Question 15

What were Horn (1970)’s findings about the development of general IQ, Fluid and crystallised intelligence

Answer 15

Fluid gets worse with age

Crystallised gets better with age as you get more experienecs

Both of these cancel each other out so general IQ stays pretty much the same

Question 16

Outline the Seattle Longitudinal study (Schaie, 1990, 2004)

Answer 16

Study began in 1956

• studied: inductive reasoning, spatial orientation, perceptual speed, numeric ability, verbal ability, verbal memory
• 50 is when things start to decline
• found that between 50-59, few people se edecline in intellectual ability
• 75-79 most experience decline
• after 80 nothing changes, it cant get much worse

X - ignored stuff like dementia and Az

Question 17

Define intellectual ability

Answer 17

Critical thinking, reasoning, problem solving

NOT intelligence

Question 18

Outline what Wilkinson & Alison (1989) did (RT)

Answer 18

Looked at reaction time and age
- found that ability becomes stable as they age
- gets quickest around 18-30 then gets worse then plateaus
X - in a lab

Question 19

Outline what Rabbit et al (2001) did (RT)

Answer 19

Choice reaction time task

• they were asked to do multiple things at once, as this reflects everyday multi-tasking
• research was actually only interested in one task
• found that abilities was dependent on the person, the task and the situation - cant make generic assumptions, everyone is different

Question 20

Why could older people have slower performance?

Answer 20

• may have more self-monitoring - due to their extensive knowledge and experience
• allows more information to be considered before making a decision - meaning less errors but slower time
• They are just more cautious and do more monitoring, cant say they are getting worse

Question 21

What did Hampson & Goldberg (2006) find about the stability of the Big 5?

Answer 21

• primary school kids were rated by their teachers
• Extraversion and conscientiousness were more stable than other three
• conscientiousness includes: setting goals etc - if they do this as a child, they do it as an adult
• the big 5 were stable within 2 time points in childhood, and within 2 time points in adulthood, but generally not so across the 40 years

Question 22

Outline Milojev & Sibley (2014)

Answer 22

• surveyed new zealanders aged from 20-80, not longitudinal
• assessed the big 6
• levels of stability varied by age
• 20-50s - increasing stability
• 50-80 - decreasing stability
• Extraversion was most stable, agreeableness was least stable

Question 23

Outline Woodruff (1983)

Answer 23

Measured if we change as much as we think we have
- measured them in 1944, then in 1969
- had to do 2 things:
1. complete as you remember yourself 25 years ago
- personality, cognitive abilities, behaviour etc
2. Complete as you are now
Found:
- remembered answers were inaccurate and overestimated change
- they had changed less than they thought they had

Question 24

Outline Robins et al (2005)

Answer 24

• assessed students on big 5
• then asked 4 years later to rate the degree of change on the big 5
• they asked how much they thought they had changed
• then tested how much they had actually changed
• most thought they had become more extraverted, agreeable, conscientious, open and less neurotic
• But in fact, they hadnt really changed
• over-estimtaed how much they had changed

Question 25

Outline Disengagement theory (Cumming & Henry (1961)

Answer 25

• argues emotion and emotional regulation- does change
• as we get older, we withdraw from societies and peers - this is normal
• students get involved in society and join groups
• but older people are more focused on self and on work

Question 26

Outle Lawrie & Phillips (2016) as contrasting evidence to the disengagement theory

Answer 26

X - argues disengagement theory was too simple and ignores factors like cultural/ social factors
- argues people can develop emotional regulation as they get older - not withdraw.